TSR The Making and Breaking of Deities & Demigods

Gods, Demigods, & Heroes was a D&D supplement that I suggested to Gary [Gygax] and it was published in 1976. It presented gods and heroes for D&D. In those days there was no google or internet research features and so I had to do a great deal of library research to get the book done. I used the Golden Bough for a great deal of the legendary treatment. I read all the novels of the authors I mentioned in the book. The concept was a first attempt at combining gods into the game and sold well.

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Note from Morrus -- this is the fourth of Jim Ward's series of articles here on EN World! Upcoming articles include TSR's Amazing Accounting Department, and The Origin of Monty Haul!

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Naturally, when AD&D came out the idea to update the gods book was given as an assignment to me. Rob Kuntz was supposed to do half of the writing, but was busy with other things and I ended up writing most of it. This time around for the 1980 release of the book there was a lot more known about role-playing and I included those features in the work.

I was a History and English teacher in Prairie Du Chien at the time, with a family of three young boys and a pleasant wife. I wrote all of the material for the book during one summer vacation in 1979.

In those days there wasn't the internet. I had my own reference books from the last time I designed the pantheons and I spent more hours and hours in the library, again taking notes and ordering books from other libraries. I wanted to add more value to the new work, than what was in the first pantheon version.

The hardest section to write was the Cthulhu mythology. I had to read all of the Lovecraft books. There were other writers of that type of genre, like August Derleth, but Gary Gygax and I talked it out and decided to just use the plentiful Lovecraft material. The hard part was that those books are truly scary. I read all of them in three months. For months afterward I had nightmares and constantly looked over my shoulder looking in the shadows for nasty things. Dealing with those dark concepts was a trial for the happy go lucky James M. Ward, but I persevered.

Gary gave me a format to use that was much like a monster manual listing. That was fine with me as it gave me an order and focus for each listing. I was given a thousand pieces of photocopied sheets. I put each one in my nonelectric typewriter and I typed up the deities, monsters, heroes, and other things of the pantheon. In the creation of each pantheon I did the exact same thing. I made a list of the deities. I placed an imagined value on their power and influence. This caused me to list them as greater or lesser deities. For example I had Zeus as a greater god, Artemis was listed as a lesser goddess, Heracles was listed as a demi-god for his half god parent. In the research for all the pantheons I came across creatures and heroes that were added to the pantheon. Then I looked at each character and the legends about them and made up magic statistics on the items that legends reported. I sent each pantheon for Gary to review and generally he liked all of them.

I can remember we had a debate over the hit points of the gods. I wanted the leader of the gods in each pantheon to have 1,000 hit points. Gary wanted them to have 400. His point was that they couldn't be killed on the prime material plane. If any deity were killed in a battle with player characters their spirit of some type would go back to their home plane and reform. There was no arguing with that logic. That discussion caused me to invent the Plane of Concordant Opposition among the planes that Gary put together.

I would like to use this forum to set some small bit of controversy straight from my point of view. When I first started outlining the book, Gary Gygax told me there might be a copyright problem with the Lovecraft and Moorcock sections of the book. Gary gave me the addresses of those two groups and suggested I get permission from them to print those sections of the book. I immediately sent out the two letters and a month later got positive replies back from both groups. They were pleased to get their concepts mention in the book. I foolishly gave those letters to the TSR legal department (I wish I had them to show you now). The book was printed and published in 1980 to wide acclaim. Fans liked the mention of temples and divine magic items. They liked the references to monsters associated with this or that religion.

TSR received a cease and desist order from Chaosium. In 1981 Chaosium printed Cthulhu and Elric set of role-playing games and naturally didn't want a competitor doing the same thing. Please note that I don't blame them a bit. They had contracts with those two groups and were supposed to defend their rights to the trademark. Those two groups should have mentioned to TSR that they were signing contracts with another company. I wouldn't have put those pantheons in the book in that event. There are literally hundreds of other pantheons that could have been included. It is my belief that if TSR had gone to California with those two letters and gone to court, the company would have been allowed to continue publishing. In those days TSR management didn't think they had the money to hire a California lawyer, fly out to California where the case would be judged, and take the case to court. They decided to remove those two sections and continue publishing the book.

I'm happy to report that Michael Moorcock was nice enough to declare in print that he did indeed give TSR and myself permission to write about his works.

Naturally, I wasn't pleased because I had gone through the work of getting permission for those two sections. I immediately offered to write two new sections free of charge to TSR. Management said no. Every year since then, some goofy fan on the message boards claims that TSR stole those two concepts and put them in the book. I don't like being accused of plagiarism. I'm here to say I did my due diligence and didn't get the chance to make the situation better.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Seems to be a catch-22. If they don't include it, it's "the absence of X, Y, Z is bad.". If they do include them, then it's "cultural appropriation is bad."

I won't disagree that some of the stuff TSR did back then was pretty problematic. But I think it's important to look at the context as well. Most everything that came out was inspired by fans and players, and back in the late 70s early 80s, pretty much everyone in the community was a white male. There has been a lot of progress with becoming more diverse as a group of gamers, and thus now it's easier to find a player from Central East Africa who can give a much more accurate account/supplement for Central Eastern African cultures and not have it be cultural appropriation. But in 1980? If you wanted to have a campaign in Africa, finding someone who was a gamer who was from Africa was much more difficult. And of course, the danger/risk of that is that you get errors because of stereotypes. it's highly unfortunate, but it was the reality back then.

Point being, is that it might not be fair to judge TSR D&D through a modern standard.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Maybe one of these days WotC will actually get around to putting a PDF of this on dmsguild like they have with a lot of previous edition material so I can actually get a copy for a reasonable price. Because I don't consider my current options of a king's ransom or a pirate's booty as meaningful options.

 

[maceochaid]

Yaarel, I want to agree 100% with what you said.

However I also want to pose an idea.

With this debate I am interested in how DnD 5E has decided in the Player's Handbooks and descriptions of Cleric Domains to only include those religions that are both European and accepted broadly by our culture as part of European literature and not living religions (Neo-Pagans my apologies).

Jim Ward did make mistakes in his treatment of American Indian and Far East Pantheons (as Yaarel and I have both pointed out there are inaccuracies in his Norse and Celtic representations as well as his Native American and Far Eastern religions). However there is some value in making his book represent Fantasy as being able to be MORE than the standard European world.

He did so also based on research and at least a value of accuracy, even if his scholarship may have ultimately failed some of the groups represented. I think this could still be a document useful in imagining a future of RPG's that don't rely on European fantasy tropes, without relegating people of color to strange vague Orientalist/Primativism trope mash ups, rather than accuracy, (here I am thinking of 4E's Primal Spirits oscillating between fantasy Vikings and Native Americans, like how the Dothraki of Game of Thrones are Mongolian-ish).

Ward in some ways opens himself up to crticism because he tried something bold, but we might want to be careful before a primarily white produced and designed product responds to these challenges solely by avoiding the project altogether and retreat into the safety of only Hamilton/Bullfinch/D'aulaires. How to reapproach this topic should be done with care and thought, but while Ward wasn't perfect, and we do need to be sure we are doing better, he was attempting something admirable, including in his fantasy more than just white European cultures.

 

[dave2008]

To avoid falsehoods is a reasonable standard.

I generally agree; however, at the time this was written, some of what you believe is false was not considered false. Heck most texts, and based on your other posts on Norse beliefs, and scholars still refer to the Norse animistic spirits as "gods." So are they false statements?



It isnt just that the Deities & Demigods is wrong, it is the book is wrong about some of the most central concepts that matter to these cultures. It is misappropriation.

I am just giving examples pertaining to Norse spiritual heritages.

I knew that would be your focus. However, that doesn't make you correct. You are basing your viewpoint on more recent information; but you don't have first hand information. I think it is likely your viewpoint is equally as false.

Now, you would think we could get some clarity with active religions that are represented. However, my own experiences with Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Shintoism, and Hinduism have lead me to believe that their is not one truth within a particular religion. I know for a fact that practitioners of those faiths do not believe the same truths and see falsehoods in the beliefs in other practitioners of the same faith.

So what is truth and what is false then. I don't really think that is for an RPG product to decided.

 

[dave2008]

I won't speak for Yaarel, and I know this is treading close to the religion line; but I think it's pretty relevant that while D&D draws heavily on Biblical themes, it carefully avoids any direct representation of the Jewish or Christian religions. Deities & Demigods does not have a "Judeo-Christian Mythos" chapter. We are not told Moses's cleric level; we do not know if the Angel of the Lord is a planetar or a solar; we do not have a hit point total for Jesus.

It's fair to ask that similar respect be given to other real-world belief systems.

That is a good point. Of course there has been a lot of Judeo-Christian content made for D&D (and some great 5e content), but it was not included in Deities and Demigods. The does point to some lack of respect or at least perspective. I wonder if it was considered but dismissed for publishing reasons.

 

[maceochaid]

For the record, I think Curse of Strahd plays better if the Church of Lathander Morning Lord is just rewrittern to be a Fantasy Re-imagining of Gothic Literary Christianity.

 

[Morrus]

That is a good point. Of course there has been a lot of Judeo-Christian content made for D&D (and some great 5e content), but it was not included in Deities and Demigods. The does point to some lack of respect or at least perspective. I wonder if it was considered but dismissed for publishing reasons.

Given the time period and the "Satanic Panic" stuff going on, it might have been for other reasons. I guess Jim Ward would know!

 

[dave2008]

Generally, cultures are flattered when outsiders take an interest in them. But when outsiders start saying stuff that is wrong, and then silencing those cultures when they are trying to clarify something. It comes across as less than flattering.

There is no silencing going on, so we should be OK there.

Probably the main problem with the representation of Native American tribes is how Deities & Demigods mishmashes them together. It is sorta equivalent to saying Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are all the same.

The Native tribes are separate nations with separate belief systems. Lots of cognate concepts, but different meanings in different cultures. While they are mainly animistic, they evolve differently. Some tribes are strict animists, in which case the word ‘god’ is wrong. Some are monotheistic animists. Other tribes are polytheistic animists. The mishmash of disparate tribes does little to authentically represent these tribes.

I don't disagree. I actually have some native american ancestry on my mother's side, so I get what your saying. It was also really cool to see this stuff in a book when I was a kid and made me more interested in my heritage. That's also why I appreciated that it was labeled a generic "mythos." It is, to me, clearly trying to be a general over view, not a specific tribes viewpoint.

I think the same approach was taken with the Chinese, Japanese and Indian Mythos as well. These were not intended to be religious texts.

..., but a list of reallife belief systems of reallife cultures, does well to be diplomatic. .

I agree with that, but it would be hard to list everything and not upset someone.

 

[Yaarel]

With this debate I am interested in how DnD 5E has decided in the Player's Handbooks and descriptions of Cleric Domains to only include those religions that are both European and accepted broadly by our culture as part of European literature and not living religions (Neo-Pagans my apologies).

Heh. Often enough, I wish passionately the 5e Cleric never used the word ‘gods’ in its class description. Opening up this core class − of the Players Handbook as an erratum − goes a long way to make 5e able to represent the sacred beliefs of other peoples cultures. Not everything is about Greek gods. Or monotheism. There are other *kinds* of ways of thinking about the sacred.

While I want D&D to represent European beliefs more accurately (Norse and Celtic), I agree wholeheartedly 5e benefits to include Noneuropean beliefs − and then more accurately.

In our days, our world is imploding and becoming more homogeneous. Diversity is dying. Cultures need to make an effort to stand up for their own differences. At the same time, we all need to figure out how to get along with these other humans who insist on being different, who are our friends.



As you know, even traditions that a culture ‘no longer believes in’, can still be sacred to the culture. For example, Egyptians are mainly monotheistic Muslims, but their own Egyptian origins and antiquity is source of extreme national pride. Same goes for the Scandinavians. These ancient texts often articulate themes within the cultural identity that survive alive and well today.

 

[dave2008]

Given the time period and the "Satanic Panic" stuff going on, it might have been for other reasons. I guess Jim Ward would know!

I thought the satanic panic was a little bit after the publishing of this book, but you could be correct.